Hanging out with yet another one of my sweet sisters always means I have new recipes or tricks to share with you guys. Man, am I lucky to be surrounded by such great and inspiring women! My sister made the world’s best dinner rolls for our Thanksgiving meal this year and I HAD to have the recipe.

Now, this sister Michelle is a lot like me. She doesn’t cook a whole ton. At least not on the level our mom did growing up. We’re just fine leaving some meals and desserts to the professionals! :) Michelle and I (and our other sister Melanie) pretty much have a dedicated Marco Polo chat thread of us chatting and joking around with each other in drive-thru lines. No shame in our game!

I knew her Kitchenaid mixer gets a little dusty from time to time so when she says she LOVES making these rolls and that they are easy and she knew I could make them perfectly like her too--I was sold.

One cool little side note about these rolls is that I knew there was one egg in these rolls so I knew I would have to try an egg replacement so I could make them for my family. I am so excited to report that using a flax egg instead a regular egg works BEAUTIFULLY in this roll recipe. I could not tell a single difference in texture or taste between the two rolls! Hooray! So I think this recipe is quite flexible if you have adjustments to make for special food needs.

My family could not have been happier when I whipped up a batch of these to go with a nice bowl of corn sausage chowder. We were in heaven. It really does not get better to me in the winter time than a nice bowl of soup and bread on the side. Even better if it means warm, buttery homemade rolls!

This recipe makes 48 rolls so it is perfect for a big family gathering like Thanksgiving, or perfect to give a dozen or two from your big batch to neighbors or friends with some jam. You will be treasured forever as the best neighbor ever if you show up with these hot rolls and a smile!

The author says to give yourself about 3 hours from start to finish, but it usually takes a little less than that. You don’t even need a fancy Kitchenaid mixer or Bosch. You mix these in a bowl with a wooden spoon for best results.

One other fun thing the author likes to do with these rolls is they are crescent rolls, so they like to print off little strips of paper with things they are thankful for when they eat these for Thanksgiving. It is especially fun for kids to unwrap the roll and find a treasure. It’s kind of exciting like a fortune cookie. I thought it was a really fun idea.

I hope you enjoy these rolls as much as our family did!

Delicious Dinner Rolls

INGREDIENTS:

1 ½ cups of milk

¾ cup + 1 tablespoon sugar

1 egg (or 1 flax egg = 1 tablespoon ground flax seed mill + 3 tablespoons water)

1 tablespoon salt

2 tablespoons yeast

2 cups of warm water

About 9-10 cups of all purpose flour

At least 1 cup of butter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Scald 1 ½ cups of milk, ¾ cup sugar and ½ cup of butter, in a microwave safe bowl, for about 2 minutes. Cutting the butter into pieces helps it melt faster. There will probably be some little cubes of butter still floating in the hot mixture, they will melt.

2. Add yeast to this hot mixture, but it will be too hot to just dump the yeast straight in (it would kill it!). To cool it down stir in ½ cups of flour, then add 1 egg and 1 tablespoon of salt, and leave it to cool for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, in a measuring cup dissolve 2 tablespoons of yeast in 2 cups of warm water and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Let it sit for a couple of minutes until it is bubbly.

3. Make sure your milk mixture is just warm, not boiling and add the yeast mixture.

4. Using a fork or wooden spoon, gradually stir in 9-10 cups of flour (counting the flour you have already added to cool it earlier)j. I would recommend only adding 2 cups at a time and stirring it between. These rolls turn out so much better when they are mixed by hand.

5. At the end the dough will be dense and sticky, and may be hard to stir, you can use your hands to incorporate the rest of the flour if needed. Be sure not to add too much flour. Then smooth the dough out and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave it in a warm place and let it rise

6. When your dough is close to raising completely, butter 2 cookie sheets and set them aside.

7. Let the dough raise until it has doubled in size.

8. Cover your working space with flour to prevent the dough from sticking. Dump your dough out and divide it into 4 balls. Eyeball the sizes, then lift them up and feel the weight of each ball. Try to make them even, but they don’t have to be perfect.

9. Using one ball of dough at a time: roll the dough into a circle on a floured counter.

10. Cut the dough into quarters using a pizza cutter.

11. Then cut each quarter into 3 pieces. You should end up with 12 triangles from each circle of dough.

12. Roll the dough starting with the wide end of the triangle.

13. Tuck the tail of the triangle under the roll and place it on the buttered cookie sheet. You will make 3 rows, with 8 rolls per row. This will give you 24 rolls per pan. Two balls of dough will fill 1 pan. You will get a total of 48 rolls.

14. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Place the pans of rolls in a warm place (on top of the oven if possible) to let them rise. Once they are touching and full in size, cook (one pan at a a time) in the oven until they are golden brown. About 10-15 minutes, it may take longer depending on how hot your oven cooks. Keep a close eye on your first pan to get the right time for the second.

15. While they are still hot and fresh out of the oven run a stick of butter over the tops of the rolls for a delicious buttery glaze.

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